A vacate order was found underneath a wreath, removed in this picture, at an Airbnb rental in Brooklyn. (Courtesy of Sage Intelligence Group)

Welcome to your home away from home — just don't mind the vacate order hiding underneath the holiday wreath.

That was what greeted an Airbnb patron in Brooklyn who also happened to be running a "sting" operation on behalf of the Hotel Association of New York City.

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"I can't believe people rent places like this," Herman Weisberg of Sage Intelligence Group, who led the sting, told the Daily News. "When we see what's out there, it's very sad — especially because people come from all over the world."

The sting — backed by the city's powerful hotel industry, which has been a bitter foe of the home-renting site — sought out hosts with multiple listings in Brooklyn hotspots like Williamsburg and Greenpoint. That's because the area is represented by Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, who has proposed legislation that would make it legal for people to rent out their homes.

Current law bars renting an entire apartment for fewer than 30 days.

But critics of the site argue that many of the listings on the site aren't just homeowners trying to make some extra cash — but rather are people operating de facto hotels.

That's what they believe they found at 95 1/2 Clay St. — once they made it past the vacate order taped to the door, hidden under a shimmery wreath, surveillance footage they shot shows. It, along with another apartment in the building, had been broken down into a hostel-style setup where people could book the entire apartment or just a bedroom with the shared common area.

The vacate order, dated Nov. 17, said that a two-family house had been illegally converted into four furnished rooms "without providing required means of egress, fire alarm and sprinkler system, rendering unsafe to occupy."

You still can't spell vacation without vacate there — the order remains on the property — and on December 13, they were hit with a complaint for removing the vacate sticker.

"The safety of our hosts, guests, and communities is our primary concern, and we are investigating these complaints. Listings that are found to pose a threat to anyone's safety are permanently banned from our platform. To date, we have removed 4,800 listings in NYC that do not meet our community standards," Josh Meltzer, Airbnb's New York Head of Public Policy, said.

The Clay St. property is owned by an LLC, registered to Malina Nealis — who has graced the city's worst landlords list — and is on the same block and lot as 95 Clay St., which caught the attention of local blogs after Nealis was filmed lashing out a tenant who tried to film her as gas pipes were being replaced at the city's insistence.

Airbnb has been accused of offering listings of people operating de facto hotels. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

At the time, tenants told news outlets that Nealis appeared to be running gas to a building she'd put up in the backyard. Buildings records show violations for 95 Clay St. related to pipes running to 95 1/2 Clay St. without permits. Attempts to reach Nealis were unsuccessful.

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Current law prohibits renting an entire apartment for fewer than 30 days in New York — and some hosts seemed to know their operations were skirting the law.

A host of a Willoughby Ave. rental the investigators booked fired off an email — which ironically went to the hotel-backed investigators who booked her place — that began: "Although Airbnb is legal, Hilton and Marriott have gotten NYC to start illegally evicting and fining Airbnb guests and hosts."

She went on to advise that renters "DO NOT answer the door for anyone" and that they "DO NOT tell anyone you are renting on Airbnb, say you rented the room on Craigslist since last summer. DO NOT show them any Airbnb documents."

"We are probably being paranoid, but better safe than sorry :) :)" she added.

Airbnb said it always tells its hosts to comply with local laws — and insisted that their data shows that more than 90% of entire home listings in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are listed by hosts with only one listing. The company said its data shows that 88% of host earnings in the city are from stays in private and shared spaces, stays longer than 30 days — both of which are legal — and short stays where the host has only one listing, the category Lentol is looking to make legal.

"We strongly support the city's efforts to crack down on dangerous illegal hotels and have offered our support in these efforts, but we are also strongly opposed to enforcement officials working with hotel industry-funded private investigators to spy on regular New Yorkers who share a single home," Meltzer said — though the sting focused only on hosts with multiple full home listings. "Instead, we should pass a bill that is currently in the state legislature, which would protect regular New Yorkers and refocus enforcement on those who convert buildings to illegal hotels or create unsafe housing conditions."

Lentol said that for now, people should follow the current law.

"I do not support hosts who rent multiple apartments on home sharing websites," he said. "But, I also do not want my constituents, who use home sharing to financially help them keep their apartment in New York while away shooting films or attending conferences, to be treated as criminals. There should be room for compromise."